When making affirmations, we don’t beg or manipulate something outside of ourselves to respond to our prayer; instead, we speak from that part of us that is inseparable from our Source.

Affirmative statements activate the power within us to draw into our magnetic field that which we claim and affirm for ourselves, whether it’s something required to stabilize our life structures, or to move into the next stage of our evolution. Affirmation also assists us in removing subconscious blockages that would hinder fulfillment of our affirmative declarations.

The importance of how conviction impacts the efficacy of affirmations cannot be overlooked. You cannot fool your subconscious mind, but you should not give up if at first you don’t feel your words are imbued with absolute confidence that they will manifest. When you trustingly, patiently work with affirmations, conviction supplants doubt lodged in the subconscious, and attentive repetition anchors that which you are affirming.

Anyone interested in this topic has no doubt heard about how neuroscience is making many advances in the study of the brain, revealing new insights into how neurons and chemicals combine to create messaging systems more complex than any technology invented to date. Public television once broadcast a documentary entitled The Secret Life of the Brain, which described, among other things, how the brain absorbs and integrates information.

A student of mine told me about this as well as about her experiment of combining its principles with a class I was giving on affirmation. She learned that there are three lobes of the brain involved: one lobe which registers what one speaks, another what one hears, and the third lobe what one reads.

So, after writing down her affirmation, she spoke it aloud a few times. Then she recorded and listened to it, and finally she read it silently. Prior to this experiment, she primarily affirmed silently. But once she compared her practice and the results of simply mentally repeating an affirmation, she realized that applying all three methods grew deeper roots into her consciousness and produced good results in her practice.

What follows is a step-by-step method for practicing affirmations which you can experiment with in the laboratory of your own consciousness.

1. Write down your affirmation, perhaps in your journal if you keep one. Make sure your affirmation is in the present, active tense, as in the example given following point 6.
2. Take a posture of potency, with your spine erect, feet flat on the floor, and relax—without slouching—the front of your chest in the heart area.
3. With either closed or open eyes, gently take a couple of deep, slow inhalations and exhalations.
4. Read your affirmation silently three times and enter the feeling tone within your words.
5. Record your affirmation and listen to it.
6. Speak your affirmation aloud, feeling the conviction in your voice. First speak it loudly, then more softly and slowly, until it becomes a whisper. Lastly, affirm it only mentally until you feel trust, confidence, and peace infusing your words. This will generate a sense that you already have what you are affirming rather than forcing something into being. Affirmation is a statement of power, not of force.

Let us say, for example that you are seeking your right livelihood. Your affirmation may sound something like this: “I acknowledge the Love-Intelligence permeating the universe and living right within my own heart. In this moment I fully open to its wisdom and clarity, to the revelation of my right livelihood. I am open, receptive, and available to its intuitive guidance and catch it now. For this and so much more I give thanks.”